Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/226

208 208 HISTORY OF GREECE. himself, respecting the divine judgments which always over.oofc such impious men. 1 When we recollect how highly the Eleusinian mysteries were venerated by Greeks not born in Athens and even by foreigners, we shall not wonder at the violent indignation excited in the Athenian mind by persons who profaned or divulged them ; especially at a moment when their religious sensibilities had been so keenly wounded, and so tardily and recently healed, in ref- erence to the Hermae. 2 It was about this same time 3 that a prose- cution was instituted against the Melian philosopher Diagoras for irreligious doctrines. Having left Athens before trial, he was found guilty in his absence, and a reward was offered for his life- Probably the privileged sacred families, connected with the mysteries, were foremost in calling for expiation from the state 1 Lysias coat. Andokid. init. et fin. ; Andokid. de Myster. sect. 29. Com pare the fragment of a lost Oration by Lysias against Kinesias (Fragm. xxxi. p. 490, Bekker ; Athenaeus, xii, p. 551),where Kinesias and his friends are accused of numerous impieties, one of which consisted in celebrating festivals on unlucky and forbidden days, " in derision of our gods and our laws," wf Karayevlcjvrff rijv -&euv nal TUV vo/nuv TUV ijue-spuv. The lamentable consequences which the displeasure of the gods had brought upon them are then set forth : the companions of Kinesias had all miserably perished, while Kinesias himself was living in wretched health and in a condition worse than death : TO c5' ovruf e%ovTa roaovrov xpbvov 6ia.Te7.Elv, not Ka&' inaarrjv fyfiepav inro-dvricKovra JJ.TJ diivsadai Televrqaai ~dv piov, Tovrotf iuvoiq trpoaT/Kei rolf ra -oiavra U7r?p ovTOf i^Jjuapri^Koai. The comic poets Strattis and Plato also marked out Kinesias among their favorite subjects of derision and libel, and seem particularly to have repre- sented his lean person and constant ill health as a punishment of the gods for his impiety. See Meineke, Fragm. Comic. Grace. (Strattis), vol. ii, p. 768 (Plato), p. 679. 2 Lysias cont. Andokid. sects. 50, 51; Cornel. Nepos, Alcib. c. 4. The expressions of Pindar (Fragm. 96) and of Sophokles (Fragm. 58, Brunck. (Edip. Kolon. 1058) respecting the value of the Eleusinian mysteries, are very striking : also Cicero, Legg. ii, 14. Horace will not allow himself to be under the same roof, or in the same boat, with any one who has been guilty of divulging these mysteries (Od iii, 2, 26), much more then of deriding them. The reader will find the fullest information about these ceremonies in the Eleiisinia, forming the first treat!.- e in the work of Lobeck called Aglaopha- mus ; and in the Dissertation ;alled Eieusinia, in K. 0. Miiller's Kleine Schiificn. vol ii, p. 242, seqq. 3 Diodor. xiii. 6